The Burden Of Proof

A common tactic employed by the intellectually-deficient and amusing new atheists is the statement that theism, the belief that God exists, makes a claim that has a burden of proof but the atheist does not have a burden of proof because he or she is just expressing absence of belief in something.

The burden of proof means exactly what it sounds like--it is the standard necessary to either justify or prove a belief.  New atheists enjoy asking theists to establish the burden of proof, which is appropriate and necessary.  But when an opponent shifts the burden of proof back to them they try to escape offering any proof for their position on the asinine grounds that theism needs proof because it makes a claim that God exists while atheism does not require this because it is merely the absence of belief and claims that God does not exist.

This is bullshit, as I will demonstrate.

Atheism and theism both make a dramatic claim about reality and both demand proof for belief in either to be justified.  Yes, I said proof, not merely strong evidence.  Agnosticism about God's existence is the neutral position towards God, not atheism, contrary to what new atheists sometimes teach.  Even then, agnosticism can only be justified if it can be proven that the conclusion of every single argument for or against God's existence does not follow from the premises.  Every single one.

Besides, not a single argument for atheism could ever succeed.  For instance, if I said that "there are no extraterrestrial species in our entire universe", I would not be able to prove my claim, much less support it at all.  I would need to prove (not just assume or conclude) that every alleged encounter with aliens was a hallucination, fabrication, misunderstanding, or an illusion; that no aliens reside anywhere in or have hidden themselves in the known or unknown areas of the cosmos; that there is no possible way I could be wrong, etc.  I could never prove this and thus I am an agnostic with regards to the existence of extraterrestrial aliens, as I explain here [1].

Atheism resembles this in that it by its own nature could never be verified.  At best one can prove that a certain type of deity cannot exist due to a logical contradiction, like how a god or goddess who is simultaneously all-just and all-forgiving cannot exist in the same way that a married bachelor is absolutely impossible due to the mutual and inescapable exclusivity of the attributes ascribed to it.  However, the example I provided only proves that a deity both all-forgiving and all-just is an absurd impossibility [2], not that there is not a god with different attributes or even modified versions of the ones I listed.  At best an argument against theism might succeed in establishing agnosticism as the only justified theological view, but only if all possible arguments or proofs for God were first either refuted or it was demonstrated that they still lead to skepticism on the issue.

To prove atheism, one would have to prove that the universe or multiverse never had a beginning, that if it did it did not need a cause, that objective morality, beauty, and purpose do not exist, that the appearance of design in the universe is just an appearance that does not reflect any higher reality, that all reported and unreported religious experiences from all time are false, and that there is no deity of any kind anywhere.  Some of these things are impossible to prove and others among them could not be true due to impossibility, like denying cause and effect.  There is no possible world where cause and effect of some sort does not apply, and mathematics proves irrefutably that any possible universe must have a beginning.

Atheism does not have some exemption and to argue otherwise commits the logical fallacy of special pleading.  New atheists have hilariously attempted to sidestep away from this in numerous debates and thus have betrayed the reason they claim to revere.  Despite their pitiful insistence otherwise, the burden of proof does not rest only in the lap of the theist, but in the lap of every person who makes any claim whatsoever.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-threat-of-alien-life.html

[2].  I suspect that Christians may read the sentences refuting the concept of an all-forgiving and all-just God and recoil due to the potential belief that the Christian God is all-forgiving.  Yes, God does promise to forgive all of a person's moral failures if they truly repent and believe in Jesus Christ, but that does not make God all-forgiving, for he does not forgive people unconditionally (they must request forgiveness first).  He does not and will not forgive all people unless they all repent, which the a Bible itself admits will never occur.  However, the Bible always teaches that God is all-just and thus if the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), anyone who repents could not evade justice unless justice was inflicted on someone else.  The only way to resolve this dilemma is with the gospel, where Christ dies on behalf of sinners so that they can be reconciled to God.  So while God's nature cannot allow for him to avoid justice, his very nature requires that he not forgive all people unless they first have a change of heart towards him.